The Tell-Tale Husk.

The steady whum-whum-whum of the machine as it launders the filth off my clothes is hypnotic; couple that with the soundtrack of Kundun (Phillip Glass, minimalist virtuoso, using Tibetan instruments and chanting monks) and I am ready to enter an altered state. It's 11 and the sun hasn't even made the slightest attempt to exist; looks like yet another foul, gray day.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

I was awakened this morning (sensing a theme? being inappropriately awakened?) by the sound of a high-school football game, or scrimmage, or something. I know this not because of the roar of the fans; nay, it's because of the Voice Of God commentator. He's not very good.

Number...uh...forty....uh....nine? Oh, that's a seven! Number forty seven with a... damn, what the hell did he just do? Ah, number... uh...forty nine..NO! Number forty seven...

Me. Want. Hurt. Him. Bad.

As I lay in bed under my fleecy blanket, attempting to resume my slumber, visions like sugarplums danced in my head. None were sweet, though. In the heat of an African noon, poachers hacked the tusks out of a dead elephant. Somewhere in the Arctic, a rusty Japanese vessel launched a grenade-tipped harpoon into a whale. Beyond a Bosnian hill-town, a small boy playing in the forest stumbles upon the top of a human skull buried in a shallow grave. In a small Indian village, a woman is drugged and convinced that she needs to allow herself to be consumed in her husband's funeral pyre whilst still alive.

It's the husk. It rattles in my chest like the wind as it passes through pine trees, devoid of human sentiment. I need a kitten or something. Something's gotta give here.

So, I am going to do some damage control.

1) Chinese food. As a self-proclaimed Chinese food expert and connoisseur, I am always on the ready to feast. I will go to Bloomington's best Chinese place, Great Wall, and gorge myself into near-oblivion.

2) Book store excursion. Nothing makes me happier than going and making large, seemingly unecessary purchases at the bookstore of my choice.

3) Cleaning my home. Ok, so that's a weird one. But when I clean, and I get done, and my home gleams like Oprah Winfrey's teeth, I feel damn good about myself.

4) Random naps.

If there is any justice in the world, my charity battery will be, at least partially, charged. I will then be able to return to the world of kindly people and not have to worry about, you know, being a tool.

Light incense or a candle to whomever moves your cosmos and wish me luck.

I remain,

Domonic (Demir)